Thanks to Yonatan Zunger , looks like I have some fun new reading ahead about things that go KA-BOOM! And the scientists who apparently LIKE playing with things that go KA-BOOM! and make them even MORE KA-BOOMIE!
Originally shared by Yonatan Zunger
You may not know that there’s a rich tradition of chemists writing, shall we say, rather bluntly about their trade. And one of the kings of it is Derek Lowe, a drug discovery chemist who writes a semi-regular blog titled “Things I Won’t Work With,” primarily about the research that people in other branches of chemistry do that makes him question their sanity.
While it helps to know some chemistry to follow what’s going on (that e.g., most of the molecules in your body use carbon for their superstructure, because nitrogen in the superstructure tends to want to get out of said superstructure rather quickly, which is to say “with an earth-shattering kaboom”), you don’t really need to:
“If you or I (’cause we’re sensible, right?) look at a well-known crater-maker like dinitropyrazolopyrazole, we’ll probably decide that it has pretty much all the nitrogens it needs, if not more. But that latest paper builds off the question “How do we cram more nitro groups into this thing?”, and that’s something that wouldn’t have occurred to me to ask. Saying “this compounds doesn’t have enough nitro groups” is, for most chemists, like saying “You know, this lab doesn’t have enough flying glass in it” – pretty much the same observation, in the end.”
I should also say that Lowe is the person who introduced me to John D. Clark’s classic textbook of the history and practice of liquid rocket propellants, Ignition!, and if this sort of writing at all appeals to you (or if you were just always curious about what kinds of things can cause you to accelerate away from them at remarkable speed), then you should dig up a copy as soon as possible.
Thanks to Amber Yust for finding and sharing this latest gem in Lowe’s collection.
(Bonus: If you go to the homepage of Prof. Shreeve, lead author of the “more nitrogen!!!” paper above, you will find someone who you might mistake for a kindly librarian if you passed them on the street. This is someone who is a distinguished professor of Materials and Fluorine Chemistry, a title which alone will cause most chemists to look for some convenient large object to hide behind.
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